Easter this year was again Easter. I didn’t realize it until I was driving home Sunday evening after visiting my parents for the weekend in Fresno. The two-lane road was flanked on both sides by orchards of olive and orange trees. Driving through San Joaquin Valley orchards in the Spring has long been one of my favorite things to do. When I was still living there, I would sometimes simply drive west out of our town and for miles and miles let in the sweet smell of citrus through my open windows.  

On this Sunday, I was driving through orchards straight into a thunderstorm. I couldn’t remember ever doing this before. Thunderstorms are somewhat rare in this part of California. And admittedly, in comparison to what much of the country experiences, our thunderstorms are downright cute. But the thrill of watching bright streaks of lightning left me shrieking with banshee delight in my driver’s seat.

I was leaving Fresno awash in the love of my parents and their friends who are, more accurately, extended family. My mom and dad have always given everything they know to be there for my brother and me. But in this past year and a half, as I navigated the end of my marriage and the devastation I chose to bear as part of leaving it, I have been utterly humbled by the depth of their love and presence in my life. Through their practical and financial support they literally helped me survive. They were witnesses and nurses to my very broken heart and shattered identity. My forever cheerleaders who once cheered me on as I took my first steps now held me in prayer and love until I could knit myself a new skeleton for my soul. And their home remained as it always has been for me—a place of refuge.

Even as I pulled up to the house on Good Friday with my Honda Civic loaded with dirty laundry, somewhat mortified by the fact that I am a nearly divorced thirty-five year old woman living in a room slightly larger than most closets with limited access to a washing machine, they greeted me without any hint of judgment or disappointment. I have never been the prodigal daughter to them even when I have been to myself.

Of course, it is still hard to travel anywhere that holds memory of my life with my husband, including my parents’ home—the site of many shared holidays and weekends. We spent good and hard times in that house. And with more and more time, both types of memories are becoming easier to bear. But the way in which grief sneaks up on you like a bully prankster when you least expect is stubbornly alive and well in me. I am sure someone has already said how living with grief is like having an underwater stream that constantly runs through you, sometimes hidden, sometimes closer to the surface, sometimes catching you by surprise as it comes barreling out of the rock face and knocking you to the ground. If you know who said it, please let me know. Because they, like, totally get it.

The underwater stream surfaced Holy Saturday for reasons I am not entirely clear. But I’ve learned there is no rational reason for its emergence. It’s just there. And then you find yourself crying in the parking lot of the Spaghetti Factory trying not to smudge your mascara too much before going inside to have lunch with your parents and ten of their closest friends. But when the current carries through you whatever needed washing away—the hopes you once held for the future, the beliefs you still hold onto with a death-grip, the doubts and fears that manage to reach their fingers around your neck once more—you return to the moment cleansed.

By the time I prepared to return home to Napa on Easter evening, I was again buoyed by all the love that continues to pour into my life. Once more, we completed our family’s good-bye ritual, the gathering together for a group hug and prayer out on the sidewalk before getting into our cars and pulling away from each other with persistent waving and calling out “Love you!” until we are no longer in sight of each other.

Outside the city limits, I stopped at a gas station to get a quart of oil for my car. To the east, green open pasture extended to the foothills across the highway from the station. And on the western horizon, I could see the rain beginning to fall in a dark shadow against the pink and blue sky. And somehow, in the short distance I walked between my car and the gas station I realized that I was walking differently in my home landscape than I do anywhere else. My walk was suddenly more muscular, more certain, more on-the-ready for anything to happen. In the land of my childhood, my body remembered again what it felt like to be a scrapper. It was the way I used to step out on the basketball court when I was fifteen. Not aggressive or angry. Just ready to face anything in the eye with a heart open and strong, even if a little nervous.

As I got back into my car and headed into the thunderstorm—an electric energy so alive in the air that it felt like God was breathing life into me—I remembered it was Easter. And suddenly, I realized: it was—finally—Easter.